A CELEBRATION OF HIS LIFE AND TIMES.

Programme 2017

Monaghan Association – Dublin, presents:

Remembering Patrick Kavanagh – 2017.

Commemorating 50 years since his death on 30th Nov. 1967.

Buswells Hotel, Dublin, Tuesday, 24th October, 2017.

Background:

Patrick Kavanagh’s epic poem The Great Hunger was written while he lived in 122, Morehampton Rd. in Oct. 1941 and was first published in Horizon Magazine in January 1942 under the title The Old Peasant. It was published by the Cuala Press in late 1942. Kavanagh wrote that the Great Hunger contained ‘some queer& terrible things’but the poem can also be seen as a marker in his own work and in the evolutionary march of Irish and world culture in the 20th The Great Hunger also signalled Ireland’s coming of age politically, socially and economically. Despite his later rejection of the poem it marks Kavanagh’s own development as person and poet, its immense literary quality and its remarkable psychological insight. Desmond Swan will explore the elements which mark The Great Hunger out as a milestone in Ireland’s slow coming of age.

In the summer of 1966, one year before Patrick Kavanagh died, James Plunkett, head of features in RTE asked Adrian Cronin to make a TV documentary on the Poet. They filmed the Poet in his home village of Inniskeen and in Dublin. It was the last filmed documentary of the Poet [died 30th 1967] and is therefore an important historical record of his life and times. Godfrey Graham was the cameraman who photographed this film in 16mm black and white. Godfrey maintains that working on this film was one of the most satisfying assignments during his long career in RTE. During filming Godfrey got to know the Poet and was intrigued when he realised how Kavanagh was overjoyed that the National Television station had sought fit to make a programme on his career, having experienced poverty and rejection for most of his life. Godfrey Graham will introduce the film with some background information.